Day 282: Comet!

I’m purchasing an Xbox Live Indie Game (XBLIG) every day, seeking out the quality titles that got lost in the shuffle and are not well represented in the top 50 lists on the Xbox Dashboard. Today is day #282, and today’s game is “Comet!”.

With a classic science fiction B-movie motif, an impulse buy-friendly 80 Microsoft Point price, and a lighthearted presentation that includes the warning that the product contain “NO ZOMBIES,” this was an unmissable puzzle game purchase for me. At it’s heart, Comet! is a collect-’em-up, but one that’s a little different than others. Visually it perhaps is closest to Fantavision, but I prefer Comet!’s gameplay over the PS2 launch title classic. The game rewards building combos by collecting comets of the same colour, so getting big points in this game means strategically knowing which comets to sacrifice and which to work hard to collect.

First, from the developer (Baaad Dad):

“Comet! It’s a classic arcade game and a modern puzzler – in the back seat at a drive in B-movie. A deceptively simple game of flying saucers, space mines, alien worlds and, of course, comets! Comet! features high-speed action gameplay, unique but intuitive controls, extensive stat tracking, classic sci-fi flair, millions of points and lots of explosions.”

The game mixes it up with unique controls that have you selecting face buttons to have your flying saucer automatically “lock-on” to the nearest comet of that colour. This takes a bit of getting used to, but stick with it and it gets very intuitive. You have the ability to slow and cancel your lock-on if you change your mind, or realise you’ve made a strategic mistake; further, you can use this to re-position your ship by deliberately selecting the wrong comet and canceling (by hitting the right trigger) at the perfect moment once you’ve moved partway to it. This leads to some complex, but enjoyable, manoeuvring to get the comet(s) you want while doing the fancy footwork necessary to avoid the ones you don’t.

This is one game that won’t have you thinking “it’s just like _______”, making it an easy recommendation for 80 points.

As a follow up: I just released VideoWars, an arcade-inspired RTS that’s also not part of the usual XBLIG field of shooters and platformers. Give it a shot at some point, I would love to hear what you think!